口语

About 8 minutes, about 11 items, in two kinds of task: Listen and Repeat and Take an Interview.

• You speak into a microphone 麦克风 at a computer. There is no examiner in the room, and no one reacts to what you say — which is exactly what makes it feel strange the first time.
• ⚠ The old independent and integrated speaking tasks, where you prepared for fifteen seconds and spoke for forty-five, are gone from the 2026 test.
• Eight minutes is short. Almost all of your preparation is therefore about starting quickly, not about having more to say.

You hear a sentence and say it back.

• This belongs to Speaking, and it is scored on what you say. It is not a listening warm-up.
• You are being heard on pronunciation 发音, on stress and on whether you reproduce the whole sentence, not on inventing anything new.
• The skill is holding a whole sentence in your head long enough to say it. That is trainable, and the training is simple: take any recording, play one sentence, say it back, and lengthen the sentences as you improve.
• Say it at a normal speed. Slowing down to be careful breaks the rhythm 节奏 of the sentence, and rhythm is part of what is being judged.
• If you miss a word, keep going and finish the sentence. A complete sentence with one wrong word is worth much more than half a perfect one.

You answer a series of spoken questions, as you would in a conversation.

• Answer the question that was asked, first. Then add one reason, and one example. That shape — answer, reason, example — fits almost every question and starts you speaking within a second.
• A silence is worse than an imperfect sentence. Fillers 填充词 that real speakers use — well, I suppose, that's an interesting one — buy you a moment and sound natural. Long pauses do not.
• Do not recite. A memorised answer is audible: the rhythm changes, the vocabulary jumps a level, and it usually does not quite fit the question. Markers discount it.
• If you lose your way mid-sentence, repair it out loud — sorry, what I mean is — and carry on. That is what fluent speakers do, and it is marked as fluency, not as failure.
• Give reasons, not lists. Because the bus is cheaper and I can read on it is one good answer; three unexplained items is a weaker one.

• Being understood is the standard, not sounding native. An accent 口音 is not an error. Sounds that change a word's meaning are.
• Word stress 重音 matters more than individual sounds. PHOtograph, phoTOgrapher, photoGRAPHic — the vowels change with the stress, and a listener tracks the stress first.
• Sentence stress 句重音 carries meaning: I didn't say she stole it means six different things depending on which word you lean on.
• Practise the sounds that Chinese does not use: final consonants (cost, asked, fifths), /θ/ and /ð/ (think, this), and the /l/–/n/ and /r/ distinctions. A few minutes a day for a month is enough to change how easily you are understood.

• Record yourself and listen back. It is uncomfortable and it is the single most useful thing you can do — you will hear pauses, repetitions and unfinished sentences you did not notice.
• Practise with a timer running, answering aloud, into a microphone. The format is the hardest part for most candidates and it is free to rehearse.
• Talk to yourself in English during ordinary tasks: describe what you are doing, argue with a podcast, explain your day. Fluency is built by speaking hours, not by reading about speaking.
• ⚠ A typed answer always flatters you. When you practise writing what you would say, you get no hesitation, no silence to fill, and as much time as you like. Speak it aloud instead.

• Start within one second of the prompt ending. The clock is short, and a slow start costs more than a poor sentence.
• Finish your sentences. An abandoned sentence reads as a breakdown; a simple completed one does not.
• Warm your voice up before the test — read aloud for five minutes. A cold first answer is a wasted one, and in an eight-minute section you cannot afford it.
• Do not try to use difficult vocabulary. Use the right word. Markers reward precision and hear straight through decoration.
• Format facts in this section were checked on the ETS website on 13 September 2026: TOEFL iBT content and structure.